literary-community
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Tertulia
Tertulia is a New York-based book discovery and commerce startup that turns the internet's endless chatter about books into personalized reading recommendations, then lets you buy the book in a couple of taps. Named after the informal literary salons of Spanish cafes, it scans social media, podcasts, critics and the wider web to surface the titles people are actually talking about, pairs that with human curation, and wraps the whole thing in a community co-op that lets avid readers become part-owners of the store. In 2025 it expanded beyond readers to authors with Tertulia for Authors, an all-in-one website builder and marketing platform.
Sebastian Cwilich
Sebastian Cwilich is the founder and CEO of Tertulia, a book-discovery company that uses machine learning to surface the books people are actually talking about online. An Argentine-born physicist who spent years at AT&T Labs before reinventing himself in the art market, he co-founded Artsy and built it into the world's largest online fine-art marketplace as its president and COO. With Tertulia he set out to do for books what Artsy did for art: turn scattered conversation into discovery. The company launched in 2022 with $6M in seed funding led by AlleyCorp and, by 2025, pivoted toward author services with a popular automated website builder.